


It's the End of the World As We Know It (Original)

by Spiral_Patterns (apparition)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Universe, Castiel and Dean Winchester Have a Profound Bond, God!Jack, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, Nearly Soulless Jack, Post-Season/Series 14, Powerful Jack, Season/Series 15 Speculation, The Empty (Supernatural), This Is How It Ends, there's light at the end of the tunnel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 08:53:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18257957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparition/pseuds/Spiral_Patterns
Summary: My vision of how it all, finally, ends. Written just after 14x15 aired.





	It's the End of the World As We Know It (Original)

**Author's Note:**

> It's really ending guys. But it'll be ok.

It was the end. They’d failed. 

Jack had tried, but they'd lost. _He’d_ lost. Everything. 

This was a future no prophet had forseen. Heaven had been destroyed, and with the conduit of their connection to the divine ripped away, there would be no more to bear witness as the rest of Creation fell too. The world belonged to the ghosts now, though it was still haunted by the living.

It was only a matter of time, eons or decades, before life itself unravelled under the weight of that loss. Maybe a lifetime for Sam and Dean. Whatever that meant, now.

It would be much more than that for Jack, his nephilim grace likely to be the last thing in Creation when this was done. Even the monsters would unravel one day, though they’d be the last to go. But Jack would still be there, long after that last, tiny remaining sliver of his human soul had unravelled, drawn into the oblivion of a world without an afterlife. 

Sam and Dean were unravelling too, as listless and lifeless as those spirits. Though the ghosts were peaceful at least, in their displacement.

Sam no longer slept. He’d found a machine, an ancient relic of the fifties, to let some of them speak. The ones they were close to. But what the ghosts had to say was awful.

That the end was coming.

Sam had realised what the ghosts had meant for the world straight away.

Madness.

They’d slowly drive the living insane with the inevitability of their message, and all the while, the monsters would grow more twisted, stronger with the release of all that spiritual power across the Earth. Eventually the human race would fade, as fewer and fewer new souls came about. They were finite now, with the heart of Heaven ripped away. Sam had read all about it, trapped in an endless cycle of fruitless research that would send him spinning off into incoherent anxiety if it were ever interrupted.

Jack left him alone.

And Dean.

Dean was broken. When the ghosts came, even the ones he recognised, he looked straight through them, unwilling to search for a way to connect to the lost souls. He was still hunting at least, churning through werewolves, ghouls and vamps, but it was a routine sort of slaughter. A way to feel something, Jack reasoned. Or to give him something to kill, in lieu of the true villain.

He wouldn’t talk to Jack, though Dean still brought him along. One time, he’d muttered something about not wasting it, whatever that meant, but after that he’d stayed silent while Jack atomised the monsters Dean missed.

Occasionally, Jack resurrected him. Dean missed more and more, these days.

But Jack didn’t push it. Dean knew why the world was dying. He knew Jack was the cause of it. The resurrections were the only thing he could offer against that grim reality. He never told Dean when he’d done it either.

It was very likely Dean would ask him to stop.

Even in the decaying half-life of his human soul, even with the bare remnants of feeling still left to him in that sliver, Jack could hardly bear the pain. They were still there with him in that bunker, the two of them, but he was entirely alone, in a dying, mad world full of monsters.

Castiel was gone. Taken in that quiet, beautiful moment when they’d all believed they had won, when they were all finally at peace. Taken so easily, his bargain with the Shadow come due.  

A bargain that had saved Jack from a cold, endless oblivion. A selfless bargain the wayward angel had made without even considering whether Jack would be worth it. Now that he’d seen Castiel truly smile, Jack couldn’t imagine the warmth of it being forever lost in that darkness.

Jack was almost lost, too. Briefly, he’d been a Winchester. He’d been something good. But that was gone now too.

From the start, he’d been destined to devour. To end. As Dagon once said, “Every sad, weak human, every tight-ass angel. Every snivelling demon. They’ll all be consumed.”

It was something of a horrifying prophecy. And here he was, bringing it about. Slowly, inevitably.

He kept his distance from the Winchesters, not wanting to devour them too. Only appearing when needed. Castiel would have wanted him to protect them, and he’d tried, but there was only so much he could do when they’d stopped trying to protect themselves.

There had to be a win, a way for his family to be what they were. To rebuild Heaven. To rehouse all those souls. To give the human race a future, again.

To bring back Castiel.

Jack could feel him still - the thread where they were still tied together. He’d tried to tell Dean, to offer some sort of comfort. That they were connected, through that oblivion. He just had to find a way through.

Dean didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want the hope. Jack thought the hunter might have lost his soul too, back on that dusty roadside. But Sam listened, remembering how he’d called Castiel back before.

Sam had faith in him, still. In that connection. In Jack’s power.

And he _was_ powerful. That was how they had won before, as brief a victory as it had been. Jack had been tied to Heaven itself, to let it be anchored and powered by his grace, guided by the lore Sam had found. Not sanctioned at all by those still in Heaven - they’d been horrified by the necessity of what amounted to destroying their last bond with God. So Sam and Dean had driven across half the country to meet Castiel, who had let the remaining angels chase after a fake angel tablet, while Jack broke into Heaven.

It hadn’t been easy. Heaven had been made to be tied to God, after all, and Jack was an outsider. Cutting through that had been difficult. It was clearly designed to prevent even an archangel from doing what he was trying to do. Likely designed to prevent his father, specifically.

He was more than his father though. He was the sum of all of the Winchester’s courage, of Castiel’s determination. Of his mother’s strength.

He was enough. He had to be.

The effort of breaking something so fundamental almost ended him. But he’d fought through every safeguard and persevered, just like they’d always done. Somewhere in the midst of breaking the last tie, he glimpsed part of his grandfather, a distant light that retreated as he caught and bound the last pieces of Heaven to himself.

And then Heaven was his. _His._ Protected. Connected to a source of power once more.

Saved.

He’d flown back to Earth, to that fateful dusty road, to join them in the Impala. Next to him on the back seat, Castiel had greeted him, half-exhausted with the decoy bit of stone in his lap. The worn out angel had smiled, and said he was proud of him.

For one, brief moment, the world had been safe. The other Michael was dead. The angels had their home back. Hell was still reeling from Crowley’s absence.

For the first time, in so many years, they only had the monsters to worry about.

They'd done it. They'd succeeded. They'd won.

Castiel had wanted that win, for them all. To be free of the axe that had hung over their heads for so long. For them to simply be free - to no longer need to make those terrible choices, for the world to go on without needing saving.

With the Impala parked by the side of the road, they'd celebrated. All four of them had leant up against the warmth of the car’s wide, black hood, and they’d laughed at the absurdity of their own freedom. That the angels would finally stay home and leave the world alone. That the demons were so terrified of Jack (and of Sam) that they didn't dare walk the Earth, either.

That Jack was now their defacto God.

Sam had asked Jack if he was alright, and he was. He had the three of them there; of course he was.

And in the hazy stillness of the warm summer afternoon, Castiel had been asked by Dean if he’d ever return home.

Castiel had replied that he was already there - in the bunker, in the Impala. "Wherever you are," he’d said, earnest as ever. Dean had just nodded, smiling in the privacy of his eyes, and offered him a beer.

It hadn’t been a _moment_ really, Jack was sure of that. But Castiel had changed, as he’d taken a sip, the smile he wore lighting him up like the simple drink had been pure angel grace.

And that was when it had come. As it had promised.

The Shadow had devoured Heaven first. Pulled the unseen light out of the sky and left nothing in its place, destroying whatever victory its restoration had held. Then it had sucked the darkness out of Hell, and left nothing there too.

And as it had come for Castiel, it had carefully explained that no, there was no _home_. There was no _family._ That it had not only come to take him away, but to turn to ash the knowledge that the ones he loved would go on, that there would be something for them _after._ That Sam and Dean would die one day, maybe soon, and their souls would simply unravel, lost on the wind with nowhere to journey to.

It left the monsters alive.

And then it was gone too.

In the distance, high above, the sun still shone. But drifting out of the sky, gently fading downwards, souls began to fall. And from below too, Jack knew. They were all equal now, abandoned to float across the Earth, whatever purity or sin that had occupied their mortal lives now meaningless.

Jack felt the loss of Heaven, the keen ache through his severed connection nothing like the spreading numbness as he’d burnt through his soul. There’d at least been some of that left.

But Heaven was entirely gone. Castiel was gone.

Even in the bright sunlight, the meadows lining the roadside were filling with ghosts. Souls.

Lost. Homeless.

The same way Dean looked, as he stared at the empty space between Jack and Sam. The same way they all looked.

The bunker was a tomb. They had returned to it like zombies returning to their grave. To plan, to grieve. To do anything.

They’d welcomed any who had offered help. In the aftermath, angelic refugees had mingled with the last of the demons, both sides now all but stripped of their power. Though there were no longer sides to take.

Sam and Dean had been a rallying point, in the early days. They’d organised ways to safeguard cities, to try to bring some order to the chaos. Sam had been brilliant, designing warding on a scale never before seen, and every angel, demon and hunter had departed to see to the construction of the ambitious glyphs.

But there was a limit to what they could do. The world had a time limit now. Souls were no longer immortal. And there would come a time when their creation stopped entirely, as the last scraps of Heaven tied to Jack faded entirely. When babies would be born, live and die soulless.

They never talked about that. It was easier to pretend it wouldn’t happen.

Already, some of the ghosts were growing thin where they drifted across the sky, their translucent shimmers nothing more than darker clouds on the horizon.

There would come a time when the ghosts were all that was left. And then they'd be gone too.

But Jack would still be there. A useless God presiding over a dead world. There were only so many resurrections he could put them though, after all.

Through all their desperate planning, Dean had continued to hunt. The world was still full of monsters, after all. There was one day where he even referred to Jack as one of them, though he took it back immediately.

Jack didn't mind. He wasn't really human anyway. Not anymore. And it gave Dean's anger an outlet, turning it safely outwards, rather than inwards, where it would do the most harm.  

Dean was angry _all_ the time. A cold, unflinching thing that drove every vicious stab, every killing blow. Sam had tried to get him to join the hunters doing the warding. Dean had refused.

“So what,” he’d said. “We live, we die, and there’s nothing else. What does it matter? What does it even change?”

He left to kill a Djinn after that. Jack stayed behind, seeing the warning look in Dean's eyes. 

There were no answers. Once Dean left, Sam dug up a new book on angelic possession, talking about how they didn’t really know what souls _were_. He read it three times before Dean got back, but when Jack asked if there was something they could use, Sam told him he was still figuring it out.

He’d stopped eating, Jack noticed. He fixed it with his grace, without saying anything.

There had to be more he could do. He had to make it right. To find a way to return to the brief joy they’d found on that roadside. To put the pieces of the world back together. To put his family back together.

He was powerful. He’d bent his father to his will, and killed Michael. Devoured his grace.

He’d been enough, on his own, to keep the lights on in Heaven.

He had to be the most powerful thing in Creation, below God himself. He was the last being left with wings. He could fly, instantly, anywhere he desired. He could strike down any monster, could turn back time, could bring the humans back to life. With a snap of his fingers. For as long as their souls held out.

But none of that would fix what the Shadow had done. What it had taken from them. He was powerless, in the face of that. 

So he sent prayers, to Castiel. For some way to fix it. For some way to end it. They were being heard, Jack knew. There had to be a way through. There had to be. To follow, wherever they went. Through that barrier. He just needed to be strong enough.

He no longer told Sam about the things he was trying, though. About the ways he was trying to break through to that vast emptiness. 

He’d scoured Purgatory, pulling apart Leviathan piece by piece. They were a dead end though; when they departed, they simply circled Purgatory, trapped within its endless well.

They were the wrong type of creature. So he’d sacrificed demons, and followed their twisted souls as they faded out into nothing. And when that failed, he’d decided he wasn't strong enough. So he bled out the grace of several angels, what few remained, and let the world go on without their threat. They’d done enough to harm the world. Their power was his now.

And yet that barrier remained. Their power alone wasn't enough.

Sam and Dean had tried to stop him, when they watched him end the last angel. The literal last angel. They’d been too late.

It wasn’t right, they’d tried to say. Though Dean had looked like he was wavering for a moment, verging on interest in Jack’s plan. “What about the demons?” he asked, speaking to Jack directly for the first time in ages.

But when Sam said “Cas wouldn’t want this.” Dean had backed off.

It didn’t work, regardless. The angel’s light departed, and skipped across into the dark, but Jack still could not follow.

“He’s lost nearly all of his soul,” Sam reasoned. “He couldn’t see it wasn’t right.”

But it had to be right. It had to be. Sam had a point. The destruction of more angels would be the last thing Castiel wanted. But he’d had to try. He didn’t need Castiel’s approval, after all.

He just needed Castiel.

There was _always_ a way. Sam and Dean didn’t understand. He was the only one who could do this. And Castiel had let himself be taken so Jack could be free.

It was Jack’s fault the world was ending. So it had to be his to save.

He’d harmed, killed, destroyed. Hurt the people he’d loved, simply by being loved enough to be worth dying for. He’d done so much damage. Trying to undo his own mistakes. Trying to save the people he cared about. Trying to do what was right.

Castiel had always tried to do what was right. It was a reflexive, insistent thing, an instinct that ran deeper than whatever programming God had instilled in him.

Jack had loved him for that. For teaching him that life was the highest value of all, that even in a world full of pain and death, there was a point to it all. That there _could_ be a victory, even in the face of the worst defeat.

But all Castiel had ever seen were his failures. Over and over, again and again. It had taken a real miracle for him to see ahead - to see a true future.    

He’d placed his faith in Jack.

Jack understood now. What it was to fail, over and over. To be unable to save the ones you loved. To hurt them, trying anything, anything at all to save them, even those things that were dark, that were probably better called _evil._ He’d tried everything, after all, to cross that barrier into oblivion. To bring back the angel that had always fought for him, to undo the grief Sam and Dean wore like permanent weights. To stop the thread of the world unravelling, where the Shadow had tugged it loose. And he would keep trying, no matter the cost.

He thought he understood his father better now. Evil was just a perspective, depending on what you needed to do.

Sam had looked very worried when he’d told him that, but he still offered up solutions. Ways to use Jack’s grace. He said that they’d all done bad things, and that he had to live with the things he’d done when he’d had no soul.

“It’s there Jack,” he’d said, in a rare moment of comfort. “Don’t lose it. We don’t want to lose you. To lose you too.”

Jack thought about that through every new ritual, every new piece of warding. Sam was something to hold onto. So was Dean, behind that furious grief.

They were his responsibility. He wouldn't lose _them_ either.

He stayed in the bunker all the time now. Sam had moved on to researching Jack’s grace, asking endless questions about Heaven, and kept him close, every day.

Jack hadn’t seen Dean in weeks. Sam seemed worried about it. But then, Sam was worried about everything.

Outside, the world was growing more and more unrecognizable. There were those that fought it, that secured the cities and towns and tried to offer some kind of hope. But as more people died, the weight of all those souls grew heavier. Mortal life was never meant to have such prolonged counteract with the supernatural.

Those driven mad were the easy cases; they just ranted about lost loved ones. The tough cases were the sensitive folk. The ones who understood what was happening. Why colours everywhere were muted, why there was this deep ache inside in a place they couldn't name. Sometimes people just died, on the spot, the concentration of spiritual energy too intense to handle.

Dean checked in briefly, at the mouth of a vampire den. Five hunters had been wiped out by a whirlwind of souls from Hell. He wanted to know how to kill the damn things.

Sam didn't have an answer, apart from the obvious methods. Iron and salt would not restore Heaven, though.

But even restoring Heaven wouldn't fix what was wrong with Dean. Sam had begged Dean to get out of there, away from the clusters they knew were the worst of it.

Dean had hung up.

Sam and Jack kept trying. But that had a time limit too.

The world was broken. The day they’d tried to summon God with what remained of Jack’s connection to Heaven, and been faced with Chuck’s continued absence, the last bit of Sam had broken too.

Sam had stopped reading that day. The books were still laid out on the kitchen table, left open at the same page. Like Sam himself, Jack thought. Stuck on that same page.

So Jack had tried again, later, in a quiet grassy corner of the Earth that Sam wouldn’t notice. This time, he’d completed the ritual on his own, and he’d pulled, hard, from that distant place where he’d felt that final power gather.

His Grandfather. Chuck. They were family too, though they’d never met. He felt the connection there, a reluctant one. Jack had not been intended. He was something made outside of Creation, his father’s last rebellion.

He was the reason it was all unravelling.

The last words of the ritual sounded hollow, but Jack spoke them anyway. What else could they do? He _had_ to come. So Jack waited. Reshaped the holy mark on the ground, the binding. Shouted when he wouldn’t come, and finally pulled, forcefully, with his grace.

And Chuck appeared, watching him quietly from the rune Jack had burned into the grass. Waiting.

“Why wouldn’t you come?” Jack had tried to get out, or “How could you let this happen?” but he left those questions unasked, the sad smile on Chuck’s face convincing him he didn’t want them answered.  

“They need you,” Chuck had told him instead. “You, not me. You don’t even _know_ how weird that is.”

“So tell me what to do. Tell me how to undo all this,” Jack had pleaded, but that sad smile had already answered that plea. Chuck couldn’t.

He had no idea how.

“Maybe it’s just time,” Chuck mused, stubbing a toe against the burnt grass. “Maybe it has to end.”

He looked up at Jack, his shorter stature doing nothing to diminish the depth and weight of that stare. Meeting it, Jack could see right back to the start, where it had all began. A very long time ago. And Chuck had seen everything. The whole stretch of it all, from then to now.

Chuck laughed. “Never saw _this_ coming. As apocalypses go, you’ve really outdone mine. But that doesn’t mean it’s over. I can give you this, at least,” he’d said, and stepped forward, off the rune, to stand before Jack.

“Give me what?” Jack had asked, before once again his question was made redundant, as Chuck lifted a hand to draw a line below his beard, right across his throat.

The light that spilled out of it was the sum total of every bright point in the universe. It was searing, raging power, and it ran towards Jack, towards that severed place where he’d briefly held all of Heaven. It spilled between his lips like it was returning home, pulsing through his body, flashing behind his eyes. Not grace.

This was something else entirely. The pure, white energy of Creation.

When Jack could see again, Chuck was gone.

Later, when he’d returned to the bunker, he’d been filled with new resolve. And what might have been hope.

It had been a long time since he’d felt that. He hadn't known he _could_ still feel that.

He’d stood at the centre of that binding circle, with all the remaining power of Creation held inside - the last pieces of his humanity mixed with the last power of the angels, and the power of God himself. It sat strangely within him, like all of his separate parts wanted to escape, to burst free into something new.

So he’d pushed, with all of that power, shaping it around the lost edges of Heaven. And he tried.

He tried for days, dropped down to his knees, trying to repair what Chuck had once made. Trying to restore what was. To trace around the edges of what used to be there and bring it back. But, scattered as it was, his power wouldn’t obey. Or couldn’t. In Jack’s hands, it was simply shapeless potential.

He needed help. He couldn’t do this alone.

There was no point calling for Chuck again. Or the other primordial power, his sister. Sam had almost tried to call _her,_  after Chuck had failed to show, but Jack had prevented it. His Grandfather and Grand-aunt were bound to each other once more, Jack knew, from stories Castiel had once told him, but Amara had no leverage over the thing they fought. She was chaos, the energy of destruction, made of shadow. She would only hasten the end.

And that dual presence was gone anyway, Chuck and Amara resigned to their fate. That passing on of power had been a farewell of sorts, a letting go.

Jack was alone, of course, in bearing the last light left in the world.

So Jack reached out, and made that power into a sharp point, piercing it right at the barrier that separated him from Castiel. Pushing it hard, as hard as he could.

It should have worked. This was more power than anyone had every wielded. It was the power of God. It should have worked.

It didn’t.

Like a cold stone placed in the core of him, Jack had his answer. There was no power that would break that barrier. No force, no device, no special ritual. None. Still, he kept trying. He refused to stop trying.  

After six days of it, even Sam had noticed something was wrong.

But it was Dean that had tried to stop him, figuring out his intentions before he’d truly known them himself.

There were no more options. “There’s no happy ending, for either of us,” his mother had told him, when she’d been carrying him. She’d been right. There wasn’t happiness here, in this dying world. But there might be something beyond that ending.

What else was left?

So Jack had broken the barrier between Creation and Nothing. But not through grace, or any other power. He did it the old way.

After all, they still had his father’s blade. Safely stored. Golden, clean. No hint of the deaths it had caused along its winding length.

Using it on himself had been easy.

Dying had been easy, the trip across to oblivion simple, brief. Painless. And laden with power as he was, heavy with all that grace, the Shadow welcomed him like an old friend. It had been eagerly awaiting this, after all, certain of his arrival to its long silence.

It had hidden Castiel, of course, knowing his mission. And it hid from him too, letting Jack glimpse its liquid darkness without ever letting him get near. Letting him waste his strength on navigating a space with no direction, no meaning. Nothing.

Ceaseless, timeless, shapeless. Jack existed there through sheer will alone. In the eternity of it, the urge to lie down and not be was so strong.

He fought it.

He would always fight it, though all of his grace, all of his power was useless here, in the antithesis of being. The power of Creation too, that meant nothing here, where there was _nothing_ to create. But Jack had brought something with him that the Empty had never seen. Something so bright against that endless black that it lit the tens of thousands of sleeping beings that resided there, and woke them from their slumber.

The last sliver of his soul.

The thing that lived here didn't like that. The Shadow.

 _Souls can not be here_ , it whispered, wearing Castiel's face. _Souls are part of Creation._

The last glimmer of Jack's had apparently escaped its notice, until it was too late and he’d entered its realm. As long lost angels and demons trailed behind him, drawn to its light, the Shadow fled.

God, it had known. And understood.

Jack was something new altogether. And it feared him.

Hunting it down was easy, now that he saw its weakness. The brightness dissolved it, made it thin. It hid itself, but Jack was there, a being. A part of Creation. Existence, in a place that should have none.  

Devouring it was easy too. Consuming its power, the way he had Michael’s. Destroying the paradox of its living essence, and combining it with his own. Breathing in that liquid Nothing, the way he'd consumed the light of Creation.

Easy.

It made him powerful. Powerful enough to reshape reality. Or unmake it. Maybe even more powerful than God.

And it made him understand. The black ink of it flowed around the white energy of creation, filling its gaps, settling together against Chuck’s gift. The way it was meant to.

The darkness of it was so familiar. His Grand-aunt, he realised. This was where she’d been born. In the dark. From all of this.

His Grandfather too. The two of them had begun here, outside of everything. They’d found their power in this place, and when Chuck had created something beyond it, he’d led his sister through with him. And they’d left, drawn together and split apart by what Chuck had done. What Chuck had made, out of nothing. His power was light, but it had once been dark too. Creating had changed him, somehow. Whereas Amara had remained a shadow. Darkness.

They had _all_ come from nothing. From the void. At the start of it all.

There had been a third sibling too. A forgotten one. That first Shadow that had come before any of them, far too old to transform the way the youngest of them had, the way Jack’s Grandfather had. The oldest of them, far too proud to submit to the mess of Creation, and join its siblings.

That being was left behind, to go mad on its own without them. To preside over the bits of dying Creation that leaked back into this realm, the departed angels and demons slumbering as Chuck’s world ran its course. To be tormented by its inability to have what Chuck, and eventually Amara, had. What all of those dead angels, and even most of those demons had.

What Castiel had.

Connection. Family.

A home.

It had been lonely. No wonder it had wanted to sleep. Oblivion was so much kinder.

But he’d woken it up, when he’d reached out to Castiel, here. It had tried to send the angel away, and return to its slumber, but Jack’s continued presence would not allow that.  

So It had tried to bring Jack here, to put him to sleep, but Castiel had stood in its way, mocking it with his _love_ and _devotion_ for Jack. Finally, it had pulled apart the source of its torment. It had torn away Castiel, and scattered him as far as it could. As far away from _itself_ as it could. And lured Jack here, on his own, to meet his end.

This was why it had destroyed Heaven and Hell, destroyed any hope of home. Why it had broken the world.

To preserve its own sanity.

And not just this world. All worlds were dying. Jack could see them now, in the same state as his own. Their dead were here too among the rest, awakened by the light of his soul.

They would all come back to here in the end. Into silence. Into peace.

It was easier that way. If Creation itself were quiet, the Shadow could finally sleep.

Jack understood now. He was here too now, with that same power. That same darkness.

He was just as alone as it had been.

All around him were the dead of Heaven, shadowy as they ringed him. Some, he recognised. Some had been friends.

Some had not. Michael was there, the one he had ended, watching him. Come to conquer Jack’s world, and now claimed by it. At his side stood Gabriel, whom he'd briefly known. There were others, an uncle he'd never met. So many nameless angels. And some more that he had ended, while trying to find this place. They didn't seem to hold any judgement, any of them. They were just waiting.  

Even the demons kept their peace - patient, dark, smokey shapes that were still brighter than the backdrop of Nothing behind them.

And behind those, in the deepest part, red eyes glowed against the darkness.

 _Lightbringer._ Something they did have in common.

None of the dead beings seemed to see each other. And when he'd tried to talk to them, to ask where Castiel was, they'd just continued to stare, unblinking. Waiting.

Waiting to see what he would do.

His conquest of the Empty had been easy. Finding Castiel, though. That wasn’t just hard. It was impossible.  

He’d been hidden too well. Scattered into the barest pieces, the vague echo still bearing that unreachable fondness, that thing that had drawn him here. But it was a fading promise, the very act of pursuing it pushing it further and further away.

There was no way forward. Nothing behind, nothing ahead. Just nothing.

The doorway back to Sam and Dean was lost, a blade through its heart. There was no returning, anyway. The thing he’d become, part-light and part-dark, could not exist in that old place. He was too large for it.

He did not fit here either, his brightness too alien to allow for any sense of peace. He’d always been that way, halfway between things. Half-angel, half-human. Half-alive, half-dying. Half-God, and half-forgotten. He belonged nowhere.

Which was fitting. _This_ was nowhere.

He wanted to sleep. To drift away. But he could not. It was that tie to his old life. It was distracting. 

The world he had come from was still there, a fading, distant presence. It continued to die, and with the final clarity of this timeless place Jack saw that he would never be able to use this new power, or any power, to save it. He would never be able to recreate what Chuck had wrought - that was not his to make. That time had been had. His friends would be lost, the ones he loved would be lost.

He could consume it all, though. He could. And let it be truly done with. He could become the Empty, and let them become Nothing. Just black, pure silence. He could let them all sleep, and they’d never know fear, or pain. They’d simply be at peace.

It was his nature, after all, to end things.

But Castiel hadn’t believed in that. He’d believed in something good. He’d believed that Jack’s power would one day save them.

 _Castiel_ , he shouted across the void.

There was no answer.

But from the far off dwindling of the world that had birthed him, something familiar buzzed against an old memory of a fast, black car. 

_Jack._

The sound tickled at the edges of Jack's mind, in the place where he held on to that fragment of his soul. It was the memory of the gruff indifference that had taught him to drive. To shoot. To fight.

To never give up.

It was where he had been taught loyalty, devotion. Fierce, enduring, will. Where he'd learnt that he could be something good. That he _was_ something good. And it was where he'd been given something the Shadow had never had - family.

_Jack._

It wouldn’t stop. A relentless repetition, drawing him back to its source. Of playing cards with Dean, and losing because he’d been playing by the rules. Of Sam teaching him how to read, and being frustrated, but impressed, when he’d mastered Latin in a week.

_Jack Jack Jack._

Of driving with Castiel, on their first hunt together. Of the pizza nights, and the bar ones Sam wasn’t supposed to know about. Of all of them laughing when Castiel had opened a beer for him, not knowing Dean had freshly shaken it up, utterly drenching the angel. Of the fond disapproval on Castiel’s face when it had happened the second time. And the third.

_Jack. If you can hear me. I’m sorry._

Whiskey, old cowboy movies and monster hunts. Jokes that Jack didn’t get. The relief when he realised Castiel didn’t get them either. The huge mess in the kitchen when he’d made burgers, and the sly grin Dean had worn when he’d tricked Castiel into cleaning it up. The blue sky, the open road, Sam riding shotgun yelling that they’d missed the turn off. The right music played at the right volume, and Dean loudly singing along.

_I know I should have tried harder. I should have been there for you._

The biggest fish Jack had ever seen on the end of his line, caught because he’d been paying attention, like he’d been told.

Pay attention. He had to pay attention.

_Hell, we all should have. We were just so… I’m just sorry Jack. I’m sorry._

Dean. Dean was _praying._

Dean was _praying to Jack._  

_And I know why you did it. I know you went looking for him, but listen. Losing you wasn’t part of that bargain. He did it for you, and I get that. I really do. And it was. It was-_

The words were getting stronger. Powerful. He could hear Dean’s voice, clear now. Hear the rough-throated hitch as he went on.

 _It was worth it. What he did. It was who he was. It was a gift, and I_ _wasted_ _it. I_ wasted _it. He had faith in you, and I should have too. You know I wasn’t really angry with you Jack? You know that, right? I was angry at him. Because I loved him. And he left. He never even told me what he’d done until it was too late. And then you left too, because I-_

Dean was crying now too.

Crying over Jack?

_Because I couldn’t protect you. I promised him that. Did you know that? I promised Cas I’d always look after you. And I messed that up, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

He wanted to reply to Dean, to tell him that it wasn’t his fault. That he’d done his best, and that Jack loved them all. Of course he did. But the connection only went one way. There was some relief in that.

He didn’t have to tell Dean that he’d failed. That he couldn’t find Castiel.

_You know we loved you, Jack. We all did. I was a dick about it, and I tried to keep you by my side, but I just couldn’t look at you and not think about him. You were our kid, Jack. You were ours._

His voice was so loud. The loudest thing that had ever existed in the silence.

_You were all I had left of him._

Him. Castiel. _Castiel._ The realisation was a lightning bolt, blinding against the dark.

Jack couldn’t find him. He never would. But Dean could. Dean had something that didn’t exist here, something powerful he could use to pull against that scattering and bring Castiel back.

Dean was home.

The connection only went one way, but he could send it on. Let it be heard.

He tuned himself into the prayer, amplifying as much of it as he could, and focused it onward, to the distant remnants of the angel that had raised him.

The lock as it connected was like a radio tuned to the right frequency, the signal between strong and clear.

And there in the dark, coming in from the furthest reaches, was a hesitant, barely audible response.  

_Dean?_

He honed it on it, hearing Dean continue. Hearing all of Dean’s love and loss poured out across the void, filling it up with the richness of those memories. Of all that feeling, so much brighter than the bare fragment of soul Jack had smuggled here. Broadcasting out across the Empty, a reminder of home.

 _Dean, where are you?_ There. Gravelly, and lost. Closer now.

 _I miss him,_  Dean was saying. _I miss him. And I miss you, Jack._

Jack could feel the strength of it, as he traced along that connection between Dean and Castiel, a thing that stretched through boundless nothing, beyond life and death and everything else, and held tight across the barrier between here and there.

And then he’d found him. He’d found Castiel, slouching against the black in that familiar trench coat, tilting his head as he listened.   

There was more of Jack’s soul left than he’d realised. He crushed the angel close to him, locking his arms tight.

Castiel stiffened in shock for a moment, and then returned the hug.

Then he pulled away in alarm. _Jack, you can’t be here. You can’t be... Why does Dean miss you? What did you do?_

 _You told me dying was something of a rite of passage, for a Winchester,_ Jack replied. _Guess I’m definitely a Winchester._ It felt good to say that, but Castiel still looked confused.

 _I don’t understand. The Shadow… it’s gone. And you’re… what_ are _you?_ He was squinting at the brightness of Jack’s soul, trying to see what it was made of.

 _Something new,_  Jack replied. Then he thought about it more, and added, _I’m your son._

 _Maybe a bit too much like me,_ Castiel muttered, looking away. But there was a small, brief smile there.

Then he grew solemn. Dean was still praying, and it hurt both of them to hear it. _Jack. We can’t leave this place. You know that. You shouldn’t have come here. Even with all that… power… you’re holding. We can’t go back._

 _I know,_ Jack replied. _It’s ending. And I can’t stop it. Even God can’t stop it._

 _God doesn’t hold much sway here, from what I’ve heard._ Castiel frowned. _But you do._

He reached out, into the core of Jack, where his grace moved. And the rest of it.

The vastness of the light of Creation, mixed with the darkness of Nothing pulsed through Jack’s being, revealing itself. Castiel gasped, and drew his hand back. _Jack, that’s... That’s too much power. Did you…_ he looked like he didn’t want to say it.

 _Did I kill my Grandfather? No. He gave that to me._ Jack let the white energy flare up, though it was a pale, moonlit thing against the dark. Nothing like the magnificence it had been on Earth. _And then he left. I don’t understand why. It’s useless. And the darkness only destroys. None of it can save Sam and Dean, and everyone else._ I’m _completely useless._

Castiel’s blue eyes were wide, reflecting the light of Jack’s soul. _I’m not sure. What about that?_ He pointed to the glowing sliver. _I have the impression that what you can do with that matters a lot more. Look how far it goes._ He gestured around them.

The light from that little bit of soul stretched far off into the distance, illuminating thousands of faces.

 _You’re the brightest thing here,_ Castiel said.

And just like that, Jack understood.

That was the reason. The reason Chuck had given him his light. Not to use as power, not as a weapon, or a tool. But to show him.

To show that it could be done.

That shadow could be turned to light.

The same way Jack had been made. His true strength had never been his grace. It had nothing to do with archangel power. It had come from the way he’d been created. From the love of his mother.

And by his father. By Lucifer.

Something good, that had come from darkness.

It could be done. There could be light.

There _would_ be light.

And there was.

The exploding brilliance as Jack merged all of the parts of himself together was blinding. It shot through the Empty and made it truly full, the light stretching on as far as either of them could see.

 _Jack,_ was all Castiel said, as he watched the last parts of liquid shadow transform into pure, incandescent white, that sliver of soul grown the size of galaxies.

And in the light, a clear path opened up along the channel of Dean’s prayer, to that old world. They could see it in detail. See it dying. Jack wanted to follow, to go and find Dean, and burn the ending out of the world.

But he couldn’t. Chuck had known it.

Castiel knew it too, his wonder tinged with sadness as he gazed upon the Earth. _What will you do?_ he asked, the most important question of all.

Jack thought about it. _It’s only one-way. I can’t go to them._ He looked back at Castiel. _But I could make something new. I could make something different. I could bring them through, to a new place. Not here. But Outside. Somewhere else._

 _It wouldn’t be the same,_ Castiel said, still looking down. _It wouldn’t be their world._

They thought about that for some time. It was hard for Jack to understand. _Do I have that right? To make that decision for them? To just… take them?_

 _Maybe you don’t have to. You could pull them through, when they finally… go. It would simply be a different sort of afterlife. A better one than Heaven ever was,_  he added, with no small amount of bitterness.

Jack studied him.

This was the angel that had stopped the apocalypse. That had been possessed by Jack’s father and survived. That had lived as a human, and as a God. As a servant, as a soldier, as a rebel and as a friend.

As a father.

There was no one better to decide the fate of the universe.

 _Yes,_ said Castiel. _Do it._  

And so he did.

The world Jack made was entirely new. Though he crafted it, with Castiel’s help, in the image of the world they’d known. With the things they had loved. They made a paradise, but not one without pain and fear, because that was part of being human. Loss was there to make the joy matter. It was part of being alive.

They brought the ghosts through first, the dead of the Empty helping to ferry them to the new place. In it they were reborn, as ordinary people with ordinary lives. Good lives. And free will, Castiel ensured, to rebel if they ever needed.

And when Death came, it didn’t take them to a Hell, or a Heaven.

They were done with that.

It simply started them again, to have another go at life. To become richer, each time, as they went on. Or poorer. That was their choice.

The angels and demons were offered a choice too. To remain as they were, silent and restful within the Empty, or to join the new world and be stripped of their power. To be as human as the rest.

But still free. Castiel’s system wasn’t perfect, but then that was what made it work. Sam, Dean and Jack weren’t perfect either.

 _And I’m certainly not,_ Castiel half joked, as they passed through newly made stars. _But I think I did well enough, having a hand in making you._

In making something good.

Crowley took the deal, seeing the best of a bad situation. Most of the former angels and demons did. Apart from a notable few.

Jack had hesitated, when he’d seen those red eyes. When he’d finally faced his father, alone, in the returned darkness of the Empty.

The Devil had watched him cooly. _Am I supposed to be impressed? I would have done it differently. And you’ve barely existed. What gives you the right to be in charge?_

 _Nothing_ , Jack had replied, meeting his father’s eyes. _I took it._

His father had actually seemed mildly impressed by that. _So what will you do with me? Lock me in a pit? Another cage? Or something more original. Ivory tower? Can I have long, flowy hair like Sammy, and-_

 _No._ Jack had thought about this. _You have the same offer. As everyone else._

Lucifer scoffed. _To be human? Or… dead? That’s really not much of a sell. Come on, son. We’re_ powerful. _Let’s make some more stars. Let’s do something cool! You’re doing all this on your own, and you forget I’ve done it before. We could make anything!_

Jack saw the barely restrained frustration behind that tailored enthusiasm. He _did_ care for Jack, in his own way.

He wanted his power more, though. The Devil _was,_ still, mostly the Devil. Still full of rage, still carrying the hurt of his early existence.

But maybe one day he wouldn’t be.

There was time. Family was always family.

Even Lucifer.

And as the old world continued to decay, more and more souls were coming through. They didn’t talk about it, but Jack and Castiel ached to see the Winchesters again. They’d been free to live their lives out, as much as they could in that dying place. At least the freeing of those ghosts would make it an easier place to be.

It would still exist for some time, moving along. But there would be no new souls. There’d be no real future there.

There was some of that for them here, Jack hoped.

When the time came, Sam was first. Mere years had passed on his end, but they'd been hard ones, the scruffy beard he wore doing nothing to mask the lines on his face, and the tired look in his eyes. Jack had wished he’d been able to offer some solace, for the pain he’d been put through. For the ache of those final days. 

But when they met him, on the threshold of the Empty, and Sam saw them both waiting, none of it mattered anymore. They held each other, and explained what Jack had done.

They brought him to a bunker to do it. Not _the_ bunker. Castiel had told Jack not to make it the same. There were no replacements. But it did have that same hidden fortress sense of safety, the same deep strength of a building that would withstand anything.

“I’ll be reborn? As what, a baby?” Sam hadn’t grasped it yet.

“As yourself. You’re still you, aren’t you?” Castiel’s patient logic was as implacable as ever.

Sam frowned. 

So Castiel continued. “You’ll grow up with Dean. When he’s here. Live something of a similar life.” Castiel looked at Jack. This was the difficult part.

“You won’t remember us, or any of this.” Jack explained. “Not until it’s time.”

“Until it’s time?” The clockwork of Sam’s brain was slowly ticking into gear. He ran a thumb over the mouth of the bottle he was holding, back and forth, and then took a swig. “So I _will_ see you again?”

“When you reach the time that you would have met Castiel, he’ll be there. In the world with you. But human.”

Sam had spit his drink out at that. “You’re kidding.”

“It’s not perfect. I’ll stand out. Be something of an outsider. But when I arrive, you’ll remember. Everything. Maybe even some things you don’t want to.”

Like dying, Jack thought.

Sam had questions. “Ok. I get to live again. And the angels are human. But what do I do, while I’m busy not remembering? Will I know how to hunt?”  

“We figured your father could teach you that. Or your mother.” Castiel blithely carried on through Sam’s shock. “But they probably won’t need to. There’s no monsters here. Just people.”

“Just people.” Sam said distantly.

Just a world without monsters, without real evil. That was enough to get Sam on board.

And when Dean crossed through the barrier, and saw Castiel standing there, Jack left them to their own devices. That was something that would sort itself out, the connection that had joined them from the old world and the new snapping tight, finally together.

The return of Castiel’s smile, that true one, was as warm as he’d remembered.

Jack knew they'd do all right, this time around. And the next. There was a black car waiting for them, somewhere along the timeline. And much later, long after Dean and Castiel had begun to orbit each other, Jack would walk the Earth.

He’d be there. Not like his Grandfather. He’d be there. And he’d stay.

He’d do the best he could, and he’d do it with the Winchesters. He thought they were happy, and that was all he’d wanted.

In the hazy stillness of a summer afternoon, Dean passed him a beer, leaning against the hood of the Impala with an arm around Castiel. He didn’t notice as Jack took the drink, busy listening to Castiel’s complex explanation of the formation of the cirrus clouds in the distance.

Castiel often forgot he was not at work presenting a lecture. But it was clear Dean didn’t mind, happy to listen to his angel for hours. He wasn't one, not anymore, but that was what Dean would always call him.   

Sam had the map on his phone open, in the passenger seat, trying to find where they’d missed the turn. The glare of the sun made it hard for him to see the screen.

It was all pretty normal, considering.  

But it was a world with no Heaven and Hell, a world without magic or monsters, with nothing that needed killing. Just people, with lives. Living.

It was a world with no supernatural.

Our world.


End file.
